In ‘The Future of Shopping; from high-street to iStreet’ the Daily Telegraph reports on the changing face of shopping with many customers now using high street shops as show rooms where they can view, try on, get the look and feel of products before actually buying on-line. The mix of services between the on-line world and the high street is a difficult one for retailers but there is no doubt that retail services are changing.

Burberry has not hesitated and is leading fashion retailers in service innovation, with ‘direct-to-buy’ offering fashion direct from the catwalk. A powerful mix of e-commerce and social media strategies enables shoppers to see the new season catwalk show through live streaming and to order personalised versions of clothes and handbags within minutes of seeing them. The New York Times reported in February that the 2013 Autumn show:

. . . was streamed live on Burberry.com, numerous media sites, the Burberry Facebook page and Twitter (a first, Burberry believes). There were 1,500 seats in the specially built show space in Kensington Gardens in London, but the audience potentially was more than 19.3 million, the number of Burberry’s followers across all digital platforms.

When the buy-direct service first started in 2010 it took six months to deliver the catwalk clothes to the customer but now Burberry has reduced this to eight weeks for a specific range, making the acquisition all the more exciting for the customer. Trench coats being the first in line for the latest made to order smart personalisation service.

Burberry offers a truly innovative approach to delivering customer service, offering not only e-commerce and social media experience but also increasingly immersive content-rich experiences for the customer.

Some years ago I participated in a research project in which we examined the future of software; even then, in the mid-1990s, it was apparent that change was afoot. The software industry was oriented towards the needs of developers rather than users and was slow to deliver the flexibility and functionality that users required. Our contention was that a radical shift was required in the development of software, “with a more demand-centric view, leading to software which will be delivered as a service within the framework of an open marketplace”.

Opening up the software industry

Thus the idea of ‘software as a service’ was conceived almost twenty years ago and for many users is now a reality; cloud computing for example, providing on-demand software priced on a pay-per-use basis. The software industry has undergone a revolution and change continues apace as development tools, such as App builders, are placed in the hands of enterprising youngsters, and a new generation of children are being introduced to software development through accessible languages such as those taught in codecademy.

You don’t have to be Einstein to program

So what about the future?

Users have evolved from passive consumers to active participants; software has become more pervasive underpinning not only business but also social, governmental and entertainment applications. At the same time the IT, telecoms, media and entertainment industries have converged.

The future of software is no longer simply in the hands of the traditional software companies but is the concern of governments and society. Governments began asking questions about control and future economic value of the industry and in 2007 the World Economic Forum began working on scenarios for the future to help governments understand the policy and regulatory challenges. Possible scenarios were developed for the year 2015.

Scenarios for 2015: Key questions

Who will lead/control social and economic value creation in the future? Industry or users and communities?

Scenario 2: Middle Kingdoms describes a digital world in which consumers, governments and forward-looking businesses push for interoperability, enabling a bewilderingly wide array of niche offerings to become viable propositions – and a digital ecosystem dominated by intermediaries that effectively connect users to like-minded individuals and to their highly specialised suppliers that can best meet their needs. (industry controlled – open environment)

Scenario 3: Youniverse describes a digital world in which the rise of organic grassroots communities as powerhouses of economic value creation turns traditional business thinking on its head. This leads to the rise of new organisational structures and to digital experiences that are highly personalised. (organic and community led – open environment)

To some extent all three scenarios are in existence today with the community groups in scenario 3 being somewhat uncomfortable with the industry controlled, closed environment in scenario 1. The winner in scenario 2 is the IT consultant who matches the wide range of offerings to the requirements of specific companies.

What happens next?

Recent major disruptors for the software industry include the rise of social media, the take-up of mobile devices, cloud computing and the growth of ‘big data’. According to Mark McCaffrey of PWC ‘buyers and consumers of software are changing, they don’t want to buy software and they want it delivered over multiple channels’. They want to ‘use as you go’ with no investment upfront.

What happens next in the software industry depends on the next generation and it is heartening to see a growth in coding classes in local communities and total overhaul of the ICT curriculum in schools. Consumers are increasingly interacting via Apps which can be built by relatively inexperienced developers. it may be that the future for software as a service is not only ‘use as you go’ but also ‘design, build and use as you go’ !

The picture shows a keyboard made from bananas, one example of what a creative thinker could do with Makey Makey; an invention kit which can be used to turn everyday objects into touchpads and link them to the internet.

‘From play to innovation’ is the title of a course at Stanford University where engineering students “Learn to enhance the innovation process with playfulness”. Students learn theory and practice and how to apply “design thinking to promote innovation in the corporate world.”

In the book ‘Think, play, do’ Dodgson, Gann and Salter examine the idea of ‘play’ as part of the design process through a series of commercial case studies. They identify the use of ‘Innovation Technology’, such as modelling and simulation, visualisation, virtual reality and rapid prototyping, as tools for playing with alternative designs. They also discuss the importance of “combining craft and code” (p 135) i.e. having people with deep knowledge and experience of their discipline as well as the ability to play with the innovation technology.

‘Think, play, do’ includes a section called ‘measuring play’ (p.109) which the authors recognise as being difficult but suggest that one “partial measure of play activities relates to the expenditure on design”. Play can increase creativity and decrease the time taken to weigh up alternative designs; thus potentially reducing the cost and increasing the quality of the chosen design.

Smarter growth typically involves improved services based on “acquisition and management of information about customer needs and behaviours…” For example, case study 6 shows how the creation of an innovative ICT platform service enables small and medium size enterprises in the Valtellina region of Italy to reach new customers.

Sustainable growth is development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. For example, case study 15 presents Innovation City Ruhr where an existing city with about 50,000 residents in the Ruhr Region of Germany is being rebuilt as a low-energy city.

Inclusive growth is development which “enables all members of society to participate in the process of wealth creation, in a way commensurate with their own abilities and potential.” Case study 28 presents an example of services for jobseekers in Portugal catering for people with lower level qualifications and skills, enabling them to certify their work experience and gain new qualifications.

The case studies were used as evidence by an expert panel looking forward to and contributing to policy making for a smarter, sustainable, more inclusive Europe in 2020.

Case Studies in Service Innovation provides the reader fresh insight into how innovation occurs in practice, and stimulates learning from one context to another. The volume brings together contributions from researchers and practitioners in a celebration of achievements with the intention of adding to the wider understanding of how service innovation develops.

Each of the 21 cases presents a brief description of the context in which the innovation occurred, the opportunity that led to the innovation and an overview of the innovation itself, also addressing how success was measured, what success has been achieved to date and providing links to further information.

The book is organized around five major themes, each reflecting recognized sources of service innovation:

Business Model Innovation: new ways of creating, delivering or capturing economic, social, environmental and other types of value;

The Organization in its Environment: an organization engaging beyond its own boundaries, with public private partnerships, sourcing knowledge externally, innovation networks, and open or distributed innovation;

Innovation Management within an Organization: an organization actively encouraging innovation within its own boundaries using project teams, internal governance of innovation, and methods or tools that stimulate innovation;

Process Innovation: changes in service design and delivery processes, such as consumer led innovation or consumers as part of the innovation process, service operations management, and educational processes;

Technology Innovation: the use of technology, including ICT enabled innovation, ICTs that are themselves innovative and support the delivery of new services, new ICT services, new ways of delivering services associated with ICT products, and technology other than ICT.

The final part of the book is given to four extended cases allowing for a more in-depth treatment of innovation within a complex service system. The extended cases also illustrate two important and growing trends, firstly the need for, and benefits of, a more customer centric approach to service innovation and secondly the need for better understanding of public services and the role of public-private partnerships in identifying and achieving innovation.

This remarkable example of innovation concerns Portsmouth City Council’s housing management service and the organisation of repairs on its housing stock. The council provides social housing to over 17,000 tenants and as you can imagine that also involves responsibility for an awful lot of repair work and repair workers.

Repair worker

From a tenant’s point of view if a repair needs doing on your council house such as a leaking roof or a faulty heating system, you want the repair to be carried out in one visit , at a convenient time, and you want it fixed properly i.e. for repair workers: “ to do the right repair at the right time”. Not unreasonable!

Alarmingly, the start to finish time for a repair was a lengthy 24 days, and some repairs required 4 or more visits before the job was complete. Despite tenants complaining bitterly about the service, “the service was praised by inspectors” and was meeting government targets and budget constraints. This was achieved by:

fragmenting a single job into many smaller jobs and setting targets at this level

patching up problems rather than allowing tradesmen to fix the root cause.

This emphasis on short term targets contributed to a loss of focus on the fundamental purpose of the repair system and a major re-think was needed.

Systems Thinker John Seddon and his colleagues worked with the council staff and their contractors to enable them to think about the repair management service as a whole:

What is its purpose?

Who are the people involved?

What are the processes?

How should the service be measured?

. . . and most importantly how do the people, processes and structures relate to each other?

. . . and how should they work together to achieve the purpose of the system?

Using the knowledge gained the council set about a major re-design of the service placing the tenant at the centre within an idealised three step process:

Ensure access to property

Diagnose the problem

Complete all necessary repairs

Tradesmen diagnose the problem and decide on the best way to solve it, and all necessary materials are brought to the property to complete the repairs i.e. “to do the right repair at the right time”.

As a result the start to finish time for repairs has been reduced from 24 days to 7 days, over 90% of jobs are completed right first time and a customer satisfaction rating of 99% achieved.

The innovation illustrated by this case is one of a public sector organisation adopting a new way of thinking that fundamentally affects how they operate. The Council’s housing management service took the bold step of examining the way they work at present, seeing the shortcomings and being ready to adopt a totally new holistic and systems way of thinking.

For further information about the Portsmouth City Council Case see below, all quotations are taken from this article:

The title sounds like a cryptic crossword clue and it does have a double meaning, the App technology of echoer.com provides a service for two groups of people: the blogger and the mobile phone user who wants to know what is going on nearby.

Where is everyone? Is anything happening nearby?

For the blogger: It drives traffic to their site. Echoer looks at their blog and re-delivers the header or a close imitation that they think will catch the attention of the reader. The more people read it the more prominent the blog becomes on the App interface (the blog is represented by a bubble, the more popular the blog the bigger the bubble). See the user interface for yourself.

For the user: Echoer is sensitive to geographic location and as the size of the bubble increases, users can see what is popular around them. It reflects the thoughts of those nearby.

This is an innovative tool for bloggers to add to those that drive traffic to their site assuming, of course, they have something location related to communicate.

It puts the ‘social’ into social media by focussing on the geographic location and the physical presence of people.